“Kitty” the Library Cat Gets the Axe

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Kitty the Library Cat is a library cat no more. After a brief 2-week tenure as top cat at the Musser, Iowa, public library, Kitty was handed her pink slip.

Her fleas were her undoing. The nasty critters got the best of Musser Public library director Pam Collins’ allergies.

Collins consulted with a vet and her allergist, then determined that Kitty should not follow in Dewey’s footsteps as a library cat, but should live in a private home.

Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to find a new home for Kitty. Saturday’s Muscatine Journal published a photo of Kitty and the story of her predicament. Ashley Kaufman read the story and knew she had to give Kitty a home.

“I was looking at the newspaper and saw that cat, and something about her spoke to me,” she said. “I called (the library) Saturday and we went home with her Sunday.”

Giving Kitty a home was easy. Getting Kitty to come out from under the couch may be more of a challenge.

“She’s kinda scared of us,” said Kaufman, who wanted the cat for her two sons, Carter, 3, and Riley, 9, following the death of another cat. “I asked the vet about it, and he said this is her third home in two weeks so she’s going to be frightened for a while.”

The boys “love her,” Ashley said, as does her husband, Brandon, 29, although he wasn’t in on the weekend’s informal adoption process.

Kitty came to the Kaufman home along with an array of toys, a scratching post, even a kitty fountain “that really is kind of cool,” Kaufman said.

“With all the stuff she got, I was floored,” she said.

Ashley update her Facebook page to formally announce that Kitty had joined the family.

“Now she really is an addition to our family,” she said, “if only she would come out from under the couch.”